What Never Happens (3 page)

She froze. “It’s Ragnhild,” she said tersely.

“It’s not,” he started, trying to catch her before she ran into the bedroom.

Too late. She rushed across the floor without a sound and disappeared. Only her anxiety remained. A bitterness gripped his stomach and made him pour more milk into his coffee.

His story was worse than hers. But to compare them was not only cruel, it was impossible. Pain cannot be measured, and loss cannot be weighed. All the same, he couldn’t help it. When they first met one dramatic spring, nearly four years ago now, he had found himself getting irritated a little too often by Johanne’s sorrow over Kristiane’s strangeness.

She had a child, after all. A child who was alive and had a voracious appetite for life. Different from most, but in her own way Kristiane was a lovely and very alert young child.

“I know,” Johanne said suddenly. She had come around the corner from the hall without him noticing. “You’ve had to deal with more than me. Your child is dead. I should be grateful. And I am.”

A quiver in his lower lip, barely visible in the dim light, made her stop. His hand covered his eyes.

“Was Ragnhild okay?” Adam asked.

She nodded.

“I just get so frightened,” she whispered. “When she’s asleep, I’m scared that she’ll die. When she’s awake, I think she’s going to die. Or that something will happen.”

“Johanne,” he said helplessly, and patted the chair beside him. “Come here and sit down.”

She sank down beside him. His hand rubbed her back, up and down, just a bit too roughly.

“Everything’s fine,” he said.

“You’re angry,” she whispered.

“No.”

“You are.”

His hand stopped, and he squeezed her gently on the neck.

“No, I said. But now—”

“Can’t I just be—”

“Do you know what?” he interrupted with forced jolliness. “Let’s just agree that the children are fine. Neither of us can sleep. So now we can take an hour or so to look at this”—he tapped Fiona Helle’s face with his stubby fingers—“and then we can see whether we can get to sleep. Okay?”

“You’re so good,” she said and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “And this case is worse than you fear.”

“Right.”

He finished his coffee and pushed the cup out of the way before spreading the papers across the large counter. The photograph lay between them. He ran his finger over Fiona Helle’s nose, circled her mouth, and paused a moment before picking up the picture and looking at it closely.

“What exactly do you think we’re worried about?”

“No clues whatsoever,” she said lightly. “I skimmed through all the papers.”

She was looking for a document without finding it.

“To begin with,” she sniffed, “the footprints in the snow are as good as useless. Okay, there were three prints in the driveway that probably belong to the killer, but the combination of the temperature, wind, and snow makes their value limited. The only thing that’s certain is that whoever did it had socks on over their shoes.”

“Ever since the Orderud case, every damn petty thief has used that trick,” he grumbled.

“Watch your language.”

“They’re asleep.”

“The shoe size is between 10 and 13, in other words the same as around ninety percent of the male population.”

“And a small share of the female population,” he smiled.

Johanne tucked her feet in under the bar stool.

“In any case, wearing shoes that are too big for you is another well-known trick. And it’s not possible to gauge the killer’s weight from the footprints. He was simply very lucky with the weather.”

“Or she.”

“Could be a she. But to be honest, you’d need to use quite a lot of force to overpower Fiona Helle. A physically fit lady in her prime.”

They looked at the picture again. The woman looked good for her age. Her forty-two years were apparent around the eyes, there were visible wrinkles around her mouth, and her lipstick had bled. But there was still something vibrant about her face, the direct look in her eyes, the firm skin on her neck and cheeks.

“Her tongue was cut out while she was still alive,” Adam said. “The theory so far is that she lost consciousness from strangulation, and then her tongue was cut out. The bleeding was so heavy that she can’t have been dead. Maybe the killer chose his method with care, or maybe—”

“It’s almost impossible to say,” Johanne said and frowned.

“Strangled her until she lost consciousness rather than died, I mean. He must have thought she was dead.”

“Well, at least we know that the cause of death was strangulation. He must have finished her off with his hands. After he’d cut out the tongue.”

Adam shuddered and added, “Have you seen these?”

He fished out a manila envelope and looked at it for a moment before obviously changing his mind and leaving it unopened.

“Just a peek,” Johanne said. “Normally pictures of the scene of the crime don’t bother me. But now, since Ragnhild was born, I”—tears welled up in her eyes, and she hid her face in her hands—“I cry for no reason,” she said in a loud voice, nearly shouting, before pulling herself together and whispering, “Pictures like that really don’t bother me. Normally. I’ve seen . . .”

She dried her eyes with abrupt, harsh movements and forced a smile. “The husband,” she said, “he’s got an airtight alibi.”

“No alibi is airtight,” answered Adam. Again, he put his hand on her back. The warmth spread through the thin silk.

“That’s true,” Johanne said. “But as good as. He was at his mother’s with Fiorella. He had to sleep in the same room as his daughter, because his sister and her husband were also staying the night. And on top of that, his sister had a stomach bug and was up all night. And another thing . . .” She brushed her hand under her right eye once more. Adam smiled and ran his thumb under her nose and then dried it on his pant leg.

“And another thing. There’s nothing to indicate anything other than the ordinary marital problems,” she finished. “No relationship problems, and certainly no financial problems. They’re fairly equal on that score. He earns more than she, she owns a bigger share of the house. His firm seems to be sound.”

She took his free hand. The skin was coarse, and his nails were short. Their thumbs met and moved in circles.

“And what’s more, eight days have passed,” she continued, “without you finding anything. All you’ve done is rule out a couple of obvious suspects.”

“It’s a start,” he said lamely and pulled back his hand.

“A very weak one.”

“What are your thoughts then?”

“I’ve got lots.”

“About what?”

“The tongue,” she replied and got up to get more coffee.

A car crawled down the street. The slow throb of the engine made the glass in the corner cabinet rattle. The beam of light danced on the ceiling, a moving cloud of light in the big, dark room.

“The tongue,” he repeated despondently, as if she had reminded him of an unpleasant fact that he would rather forget.

“Yes, the tongue. The method. Hate. It was deliberate. The ‘vase’”—Johanne made quote marks with her fingers—“It was made beforehand. There was no red paper in the house. I saw in your papers that it takes about eight minutes to make something like that. And that’s when you know what you’re doing.”

For the first time, she seemed to be really fired up. She opened a cupboard and took two sugar cubes from a silver bowl. The spoon scratched on the ceramic of the mug as she stirred.

“Drinking coffee when we can’t sleep,” she mumbled. “Smart move.” She looked up. “Cutting someone’s tongue out is such a loaded symbol, so aggressive and horrific that it’s hard to imagine that it’s motivated by anything other than hate. A pretty intense hate.”

“And Fiona Helle was loved by all,” Adam dryly retorted. “I think you’ve stirred the sugar enough now, dear.”

She licked the spoon and sat down again.

“The problem is, Adam, that it’s impossible to know who hated her. As long as her family, her friends, acquaintances, colleagues . . . everyone around her seemed to like the woman, you’ll have to look out there for the murderer.” She pointed out the window at a neighbor’s home, where someone had turned on a bathroom light.

“I don’t mean them, specifically,” she smiled. “I mean the general public.”

“Dear God,” groaned Adam.

“Fiona Helle was one of the most high profile TV stars in the country. I doubt there are many people who
don’t
have an opinion about what she did, and therefore also about who they thought she was, right or wrong.”

“Over four million suspects, you mean.”

“Yep.”

She took a sip of coffee before putting down her mug.

“You can forget everyone under fifteen or over seventy, and the million or so who really adored her.”

“And that leaves how many, do you reckon?”

“No idea. A couple of million, maybe?”

“A couple of million suspects—”

“Who possibly have never even spoken to her,” she added. “There doesn’t need to be any direct link between Fiona and the man who killed her.”

“Or woman.”

“Or woman,” she agreed. “Good luck. And, looking at the tongue. . . . Shhh!”

A feeble cry could be heard from the newly decorated children’s room. Adam got up before Johanne had time to react.

“She just wants food,” he said and made her sit down. “I’ll get her. Go and sit down on the sofa.”

She tried to pull herself together. The fear was physical, like a shot of adrenaline. Her pulse quickened, her cheeks flushed hot. When she lifted her hand and studied her palm, she saw the light from the ceiling reflected in the sweat in her lifeline. She dried her hands on her robe and sat down heavily on the sofa.

“Is my little munchkin hungry?” she heard Adam murmuring into the baby’s hair. “You’ll get some food from Mommy. There, there.”

The baby’s half-open eyes and eager mouth made Johanne cry again, with relief.

“I think I’ve gone crazy,” she whispered and adjusted her breast.

“You’re not crazy,” said Adam. “Just a bit tense and frightened, that’s all.”

“The tongue,” mumbled Johanne.

“We don’t need to talk about that now. Relax.”

“The fact that it was split.”

“Shhhh.”

“Liar,” she sniffed and looked up.

“Liar?”

“Not you, silly.”

She whispered to the child before she met his eye again. “The split tongue can really only mean one thing. That someone thought that Fiona Helle was a liar.”

“Well, we all tell a lie now and then,” Adam said and gently stroked the baby’s soft head with his finger. “Look, you can see the pulse in her fontanel!”

“Someone believed that Fiona Helle was lying,” Johanne repeated. “That her lying was so blatant and brutal that she deserved to die.”

Ragnhild let go of her mother’s nipple. Something that could easily be mistaken for a smile flitted across her face, and Adam knelt down and put his cheek against her damp cheek. The blister on her upper lip from sucking was pink and full of fluid. Her tiny eyelashes were nearly black.

“It must have been some lie, in that case,” Adam mumbled. “A bigger lie than I could ever make up.”

Ragnhild burped and then fell asleep.

She would never have chosen this place herself.

The others, notorious cheapskates, had suddenly decided to treat themselves to three weeks on the Riviera. What you were supposed to do on the Riviera in December was a mystery to her, but she said yes all the same. At least it would be a change.

Her father had become unbearable since her mother died. Whining and complaining and clinging to her all the time. He smelled like an old man, which was due to a combination of dirty clothes and poor bladder control. His fingers, which scraped her back when he gave the most unwanted good-bye hugs, were now disgustingly thin. Obligation forced her to visit him once a month or so. The apartment in Sandaker had never been palatial, but now that her father was living on his own, it had really gone downhill. She had finally managed, after many letters, furious phone calls, and a lot of bother, to get him a home aide, but it didn’t help much. The underside of the toilet seat was still splattered with shit. The food in the fridge was still well past its sell-by date, and you couldn’t open the door without gagging. It was unbelievable that the local council could offer an old, loyal taxpayer nothing more than an unreliable girl who could scarcely turn on a washing machine.

The idea of Christmas without her father tempted her, even though she was skeptical about traveling. Especially as the children were going too. It irritated her to no end that children today seemed to be allergic to any form of healthy food. “Don’t like, don’t like,” they kept on whining. A mantra before every meal. Not surprising they were skinny when they were little and then ballooned out when they hit their amorphous puberty, ravaged by modern eating disorders. The youngest, a girl of three or four, still had some charm. But the woman with the laptop was not particularly fond of her siblings.

But the house was big, and the room they thought she should have was impressive. They had shown her the brochures with great enthusiasm. She suspected they were relying on her to pay more than her fair share of the rent. They knew that she had money, even though they had absolutely no idea how much.

Truth be told, she had chosen not to keep in touch with most of her acquaintances. They scurried around in their small lives, making mountains out of molehills, problems that in no way would interest anyone but themselves. The red figures in her social accounts, which she had eventually decided it was necessary to draw up, screamed out at her. Sometimes, when she thought about it, she realized that she had really only met a handful of people of any merit.

They wanted her to come with them, and she could not face another Christmas with her father.

So she was standing at Gardemoen Airport, with her tickets in her hand, when her cell phone rang. The little one, the girl, had suddenly been admitted to the hospital.

She was furious. Of course her friends couldn’t leave their little girl, but did they have to wait until three quarters of an hour before the flight was due to depart to tell her? After all, the child had fallen ill four hours earlier. But she still had a choice.